The building of the second of Ruddington’s major new housing estates on former Green Belt land moves a step closer this week as around six months’ work begins to create the access.
This current agricultural land, off the A60 Loughborough Road, is one of four village green field development areas rubber-stamped by Rushcliffe Borough Council’s Local Plan Part 2 (originally known as RUD13 and then as Policy 6.3) for which William Davis Homes then received approval to build 180 new houses around a year ago. Since then, construction work has already begun for the new Avant Homes ‘Wilbur Chase’ development off Musters Road/Asher Lane but, other than for some major hedge cutting, all has been rather quiet opposite Mere Way – until now.
As shown below, the new estate is set to ‘wrap around’ the rear of Balmore Nursing Home‘s grounds. This property itself is now being substantially enlarged after the Green Belt in which it formerly sat was also rescinded during the process, enabling the long held expansion ambitions of owners MY Care Ltd.
There is already an entrance into the development field from the existing roundabout, but planners said significant road and junction improvements would be needed to access the new houses both by car and by foot for permission to be granted.
Consequently, from this Monday September 28th scheduled until March 26th 2021*, there’ll be major work on Loughborough Road all around its junction with Mere Way. This will include installing a Toucan pedestrian crossing point, widening the footways, upgrading the street lighting, building the road access for the new housing estate, plumbing in new sewers, improving the surface water drainage and widening the approaches onto the roundabout – most of which are indicated on the map below.
It’s envisaged multi-way signals will be controlling traffic at the roundabout for most of the construction period, so delays for motorists at peak times over much of the next six months can be expected.
Once this access is completed, the building of the 180 houses can begin – changing the current open view of fields from Ruddington’s southern gateway forever.
*UPDATE: The completion date for this work has now been extended to Friday June 11th 2021!
